Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[postman1782]

Obviously so people are aware, do not make comments threatening anyone with violence.

Thank you.

[Waniou]

A bit off topic sorry, but I been seeing this a lot now, but can't figure out what it means. Your sig says "46 and 2", now I know 46th president, but what is the 2 for?

I'm assuming the 2 refers to Harris as being Biden's second in charge but the sig is a reference to a Tool song, 46 and 2.

[Breccia]

I'm assuming the 2 refers to Harris as being Biden's second in charge but the sig is a reference to a Tool song, 46 and 2.

Yes, and it happens to be my guild's name.

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Pence flees like a panicky motherf (cough)

UPDATE: Pence cancels vacation. Will help with Georgia runoff instead.

[swiftowner]

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UPDATE: Pence cancels vacation. Will help with Georgia runoff instead.

Of course he is, it’s not like he’s in charge of something that is affecting the entire country, that he’s ignoring to focus on runoff elections for one state. That would just be irresponsible to do such a thing.

[beanman12345]

Of course he is, it’s not like he’s in charge of something that is affecting the entire country, that he’s ignoring to focus on runoff elections for one state. That would just be irresponsible to do such a thing.

The entire GOP is placating trump's delusion that there is massive fraud and keeping hope alive in their base that we're on a knifes edge from trump's dream of authoritarianism, breaking policy, breaking all sorts of etiquette, just to win 2 senate seats. It's pretty disgusting, not surprising, but disgusting non the less. They give 0 shits about anyone but themselves. What's a few hundred thousand american lives, when they can get a few judges on the seat?

[Breccia]

Related news:

Different sources get different numbers, for example Reuters said the death count was 1,450 which, Jesus.

But they also pointed out that this was the seventh day in a row with 100,000 or more cases. As per usual, since hospitalizations and deaths are also mounting, this cannot be blamed on testing.

Reuters claimed the number of people hospitalized was 61,000 and change -- the highest ever.

Regardless of the source anyone uses, deaths are now higher than any point in October and any point in September. One source I found said the current seven-day average is 957 deaths, and the highest in August was 1,154. April was, of course, the fucking worst.

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Also Axios reports but doesn't have a link for Texas having more than one million cases -- more than any other state.

If Texas was a country, it'd be the 10th most infected country. More people have caught COVID in Texas than Italy.

And Itally is strengthing COVID restrictions. Texas is not.

[PickleballAce]

Split the country up. Blue states join Canada. Red states can form JesusLand.

Blue Stater here. No fucking thank you.

[PhaelixWW]

CNN: 6 lawsuits Donald Trump is going to have to deal with when he leaves office

President Donald Trump will return to just plain old Donald Trump in 71 days.

And in case you forgot, there are at least a half dozen ongoing cases involving him -- and placing him in various levels of legal jeopardy -- still pending.

Because there's been SO much legal turmoil around the President for his entire first term, I thought it might make sense to go over the pending litigation involving him and where it all stands at the moment.

1) Manhattan district attorney's office looking into financial inner workings of the Trump Organization. This case, which is being overseen by Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr., grew out of questions regarding several hush money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 election by then-Trump fixer Michael Cohen to women alleging they had engaged in extramarital affairs with Trump. (Cohen told Congress, under oath, in 2019 that there was "no doubt" in his mind that Trump knew about the hush money payments.) The investigation is broader than just the hush money, however. As CNN's Kara Scannell and Erica Orden wrote last month:

"Prosecutors have suggested in court filings that the investigation could examine whether the President and his company engaged in bank fraud, insurance fraud, criminal tax fraud and falsification of business records."

Trump has repeatedly sought to block the DA's subpoena of eight years of his tax returns and financial records as part of the investigation.

2) New York state attorney general examining how Trump valued his assets. In the wake of Cohen's testimony alleging that Trump, along with his family members, had repeatedly "inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed among the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes," New York AG Letitia James announced that she would investigate the claims to see if they elevate to the level of fraud. Just last month, Eric Trump was questioned under oath about whether he or the Trump organization sought to artificially inflate and deflate their assets.

3) Attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, DC, suing over the emoluments clause. This suit was originally brought way back in 2017, alleging that Trump was violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution by profiting from foreign governments' spending in his Trump hotel in downtown Washington. (Much more on the emoluments clause here.) The case appeared dead until May, when the 4th Circuit overturned the ruling of a three-judge panel that said the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the case. Trump has appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. (There is also a second emoluments case that is still pending -- this one brought by a group of restaurants and a hotel operator.)

4) E. Jean Carroll's defamation lawsuit. Days before the 2020 election, a federal judge rejected an attempt by Trump, represented by Department of Justice lawyers, to effectively dismiss a case brought by Carroll alleging that Trump had raped her in the 1990s. He denied her allegation, saying, "She's not my type." The case is now proceeding through the federal court system.

5) Summer Zervos' defamation lawsuit. Zervos, a former contestant on "The Apprentice," sued Trump back in 2017, arguing that in his denial of her allegation that he had sexually assaulted her in 2007, he had defamed her and subjected her to harassment. Trump lost a bid to dismiss the case in late 2019, but the proceedings -- including a possible subpoena for Trump to provide a deposition -- have been put on hold until he leaves office.

6) Mary Trump's lawsuit. The niece of the President -- and the author of the scathing bestseller "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" -- sued Trump in September, alleging that he, his sister and his late brother had committed fraud to keep her from getting her fair share of the estate of Trump's father, Fred Sr.

Aside from those half-dozen suits is the question of whether Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice for his attempts to impede and inhibit the investigation into the 2016 election and Russia's role in it by special counsel Robert Mueller. In a back-and-forth during congressional testimony in July 2019, Mueller, a former FBI director, suggested that he believed Trump could be charged once he left office.

It's impossible to know whether any of these pending lawsuits will ever emerge as a genuine threat to Trump. Especially when you consider that Trump has, for decades, shown a willingness to exercise absolutely every legal avenue to protect himself, muddy the waters and slow the proceedings to a crawl.

What is clear, however, is that Trump will have fewer airtight legal protections as a former president than he did as a sitting president. Far fewer.

[Nellise]

Different sources get different numbers, for example Reuters said the death count was 1,450 which, Jesus.

Missouri yesterday reported a 100+ deaths from a backlog of unconfirmed cases, most happening in October, so that's probably why there are different numbers.

I know Illinois and Texas look scary, but they both do a lot of testing so they're probably reporting nearly all the cases that they can. One state that's absolutely screwed is Iowa. Iowa's positivity rate is nearly 50% (Illinois and Texas are about 10%) which means their real numbers are probably 4-5 times as much as they report.

[Sunseeker]

Special mention: Wyoming: 1,232 new cases (new record); 13 deaths (new record) First time for Wyoming in the 1k+ club.

Ugh, I know, I have some coworkers with friends on the inside and the hospitals are almost all full.

It's embarrassing that we took forever to reach 1000 cases in total and now we've just fucked off to make it 1k/day.

[Draco-Onis]

Different sources get different numbers, for example Reuters said the death count was 1,450 which, Jesus.

But they also pointed out that this was the seventh day in a row with 100,000 or more cases. As per usual, since hospitalizations and deaths are also mounting, this cannot be blamed on testing.

Reuters claimed the number of people hospitalized was 61,000 and change -- the highest ever.

Regardless of the source anyone uses, deaths are now higher than any point in October and any point in September. One source I found said the current seven-day average is 957 deaths, and the highest in August was 1,154. April was, of course, the fucking worst.

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Also Axios reports but doesn't have a link for Texas having more than one million cases -- more than any other state.

If Texas was a country, it'd be the 10th most infected country. More people have caught COVID in Texas than Italy.

And Itally is strengthing COVID restrictions. Texas is not.

I have a sinking feeling that once Biden takes office he will find out that the numbers are actually much worse. We really don't know what machinations Trump loyalists have been doing on the topic of the virus behind the scenes. From corruption of operation wrap speed, contract granting and buying bullshit medicine like Remdesivir and Hydroxy all to prop up Trump cronies.

[Breccia]

I have a sinking feeling that once Biden takes office he will find out that the numbers are actually much worse.

I don't know, I thought the COVID numbers we were getting were reported directly by hospitals and states?

We've already heard that the number of deaths this year is a lot higher than it was supposed to be, which would include "hidden" deaths ("He didn't die of COVID, he died of the symptoms COVID causes") and "fear" deaths ("I'm not going to the doctor, all the sick people are there"), and we heard that from Trump's own CDC.

I don't think Trump could hide the information -- he clearly wants this hoax to go away in April. If he could hide it, he would have.

[Draco-Onis]

I don't know, I thought the COVID numbers we were getting were reported directly by hospitals and states?

We've already heard that the number of deaths this year is a lot higher than it was supposed to be, which would include "hidden" deaths ("He didn't die of COVID, he died of the symptoms COVID causes") and "fear" deaths ("I'm not going to the doctor, all the sick people are there"), and we heard that from Trump's own CDC.

I don't think Trump could hide the information -- he clearly wants this hoax to go away in April. If he could hide it, he would have.

There was a time before the election where they took the data reporting away from the CDC and the swing states number magically got better. It has been reversed because they were too incompetent to even handle this cover up properly but the numbers are clearly under reported.

As with everything after Trump there will need to be decisions made about whether Biden wants to cover it up in the name of peace or out Trump and his cronies.

[Benggaul]

I don't know, I thought the COVID numbers we were getting were reported directly by hospitals and states?

In most cases, this is correct. However: Fuck Florida.

[alexw]

I don't know, I thought the COVID numbers we were getting were reported directly by hospitals and states?

We've already heard that the number of deaths this year is a lot higher than it was supposed to be, which would include "hidden" deaths ("He didn't die of COVID, he died of the symptoms COVID causes") and "fear" deaths ("I'm not going to the doctor, all the sick people are there"), and we heard that from Trump's own CDC.

I don't think Trump could hide the information -- he clearly wants this hoax to go away in April. If he could hide it, he would have.

Covid-19 has killed at least 300,000 people at this point. The best thing to look at is the excess deaths that have occurred this year relative to prior years, as that will capture all the unreported deaths that have been attributed to other causes but were in reality a consequence of covid-19.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm

Its going to get a lot worse though. Hospitals are reaching the point at which they start to overload and are unable to take on more patients. Those excess patients are going to get zero treatment which will cause the death rate to skyrocket. And given that it takes 3 weeks to go from disease onset to needing hospital treatment we are already past that point, we just don't know it yet.

[Breccia]

Covid-19 has killed at least 300,000 people at this point.

That's the number I've seen as well, yeah.

It's so depressing.

[zorkuus]

How can Rudy have time. He's still trying to get together for release all the "amazing things he's finding" on Obama's birth certificate and Hunter Biden stuff in Ukraine.

They're going to get released any day now. Just in time for the election.

[swiftowner]

Ugh, I know, I have some coworkers with friends on the inside and the hospitals are almost all full.

Yeah, this is what I heard from my wife as well. She told me last night after work that their ICU is full. Her unit gets critically ill/injured people who might go to ICU or have come from ICU who are more stable but still need to recover, something like that. Indiana, as of yesterday, had like 30% icu bed availability, but given the location of the hospital, it’s not surprising that her hospital is at capacity.

[Warning]

Can't wait for January 20th. The day delusional Trump supporters will be forcefully ripped back into reality, and America can finally start real work on turning this crisis around.

[alach]

We had the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, and hopefully, next year we can have a war on misinformation. Fake news and gossip has done so much damage to this world over the last decade it is hard to believe. The president has weaponized purple-monkey-dishwasher.
We need a law that forces Fox news and conservative talk radio to label themseleves 'For entertainment purposes only.' It was slapped on to those astrology commercials for the same reason.